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California Governor Jerry Brown speaks out about California wildfires at the Woolsey fire command center in Camarillo, CA Thursday November 15, 2018. At left is Ryan Zinke, U.S. Department of the Interior. (Photo by David Crane, Los Angeles Daily News/SCNG)

Gov. Jerry Brown and Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke toured California’s fire-scarred wildlands and urban areas Thursday, Nov. 15, and stopped for a meeting with commanders fighting the Woolsey fire in Malibu and Thousand Oaks after surveying the burn area from the air.

From the unified command post in Camarillo, where hundreds of emergency officials gathered over the last week to coordinate their effort on the fire, Brown praised the work firefighters have done so far in evacuating residents and containing multiple wildfires around the state.

But he said the disaster response was only the first step in addressing the effects of fires — Brown said local and state governments needed to re-think their long-term strategies for preventing fires in the first place or lessening their effects.

“We have to manage our forests better, and we have to build our cities more smartly,” he said. “We have to build shelters so people can escape when these terrible fires get out of hand.”

Brown said Californians should understand that massive wildfires were the “new abnormal,” repeating the phrase he’s been using to describe the state’s increasingly year-round fire season.

And he said climate change would continue to make temperatures hotter and the dry conditions fueling wildfires last longer.

“We have to deal with climate change,” Brown said. “We have to get on the side of nature, we can’t just fight it.”

Both Brown and Zinke spoke in Camarillo after meeting with firefighters at the command post for about a half hour.

More than 3,900 fire personnel were fighting the blaze Thursday, and an estimated 2.5 million gallons of water and 500 million gallons of fire retardant have been dumped on the fire since it began.

Thursday morning the governor and interior secretary boarded an airplane to survey areas burned in the Woolsey fire.

Zinke, who with the governor this week visited Butte County in Northern California where dozens of people in the town of Paradise were killed in the Camp fire as it raged out of control, said further loss of life as a result of wildfires was “unacceptable.”

Zinke said now was not the time for “finger-pointing.” He encouraged land managers at every level to work together, given that many of the state’s forested areas are a “mishmash of federal and state land.”

And while he has not mentioned climate change as a factor making the state’s fires more destructive, Zinke said the weather was making fire fighters’ jobs more difficult.

“There’s no silver bullet to these fires,” Zinke said. “The season has gotten longer, temperatures are hotter. We’re in the midst of a historic drought…it’s unsustainable to have this happen year after year.”

“Things like full containment are hard to predict, but overall it’s looking very positive,” CalFire spokeswoman Kait Webb said of the Woolsey fire. “(Firefighters) are making really steady progress.”

When asked if some crews could be released by Thanksgiving she said, “That would be very nice, but we’ll be here until it’s done and they don’t need us anymore.”

Firefighters on Thursday were told to expect winds to switch around midday from northeasterly offshore Santa Ana conditions to increasing northwesterly winds from the ocean — but then to switch around again later in the evening.

“With that humidity, it gives us moisture in the air and it keeps those fuels on the damp side, so they will burn a little slower, and that helps us get the upper hand on the fire as well,” said Jeff LaRusso, public information officer with CalFire.

Still, dry conditions were expected to continue, and firefighters were warned to change their tactics as the winds headed from a different direction during the day.

“Even though the winds have given us a break, the possibility of ignition is still very high,” Webb said.

In Ventura County, evacuations were lifted for the communities of Lake Sherwood and Hidden Valley. More evacuated Malibu residents were told they could return Thursday, but other sections of the city remained off limits.

Joshua Cain is a crime and public safety reporter for the Southern California News Group, based at the L.A. Daily News in Woodland Hills. He has worked for SCNG since 2016, previously as a digital news editor in the San Gabriel Valley, helping cover breaking news, crime and local politics.

A journalist since 1975 for City News Service in Los Angeles, The Associated Press in Los Angeles and New York, and The Press-Enterprise, Richard K. De Atley has been Entertainment Editor and a features writer. He has also reported on trials and breaking news. He is currently a business reporter for The P-E. De Atley is a Cal State Long Beach graduate, a lifelong Southern Californian (except for that time in New York -- which was great!) and has been in Riverside since 1992.